46 1) "\. brary. "Glad to get back," he says. "There's no place like New York." The Colonel doesn't like to frequent bars when he is not in a position to buy more than his share of the drinks. Ever since the Kefauver Committee hegan its inquisItion of hookmakers, the Colonel has had time to do a record amount of reading. His joh with the E nquzrer carries no salary. His in- come is derived from its perquisites, which are commissions on the advertise- ments he attracts to the Enquirer's sports pages. Practically all these are from professional turf analysts, meaning tip- sters. Their profession is irreproachably Ie gitimate, since freedom of opinIon is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, but at the sam time nobody is going to pay for a tip when he can't find a hookmaker to play it with. The harder things be- came for the bookmakers last winter during the interval hetween New York II T7 c:;t. J ....... . . racing seasons, the more nearly impossi- ble they became for the purveyors of counsel. As the latter proceeded to drop their ads, the ColonePs ahsences from his Gamhrinian haunts grew longer and mOle recurrent, and acquaintances be- gan to refer to him in the past tense. ThIs was an error. Now that tracks neal the city are open again, drawing an average of around twenty-five thousand cus- tomers a day, the 'Colonel is doing bet- ter, although his business is still far helow what it was in the great day of the hOD kmakers. The Colonel, by his own account, was horn in 1874 in New Orleans, and there is no reason to quibhle about the date. He has no trace of Southern ac- cen t, and this has led certain of his friends to assert that his true birthplace was considerably north of Louisiana- in Montreal or Brooklyn-and that his pI esen t version of his origin was sug- , ., - gested by the name of the hotel where he lives But if his cradle was not bowered by magnolias, it should have been. He is a true romantic. The Colo- nel himself has spoken to me of his regret at losing his Louisianian accent, hy a process he describes as slow attrition. "It got rubbed off, like pollen off the bee, hy contact with a thousand charm- ing flowers," he once said. "In the speech of each I left some trace of my native music. From each I received in return some nasal diphthong or harsh consonant. It was a heavy price." In a more practical vein, he added, "It would have been of great assistance if I had WIshed to set up on my own as a turf analyst. A Southern accent is an invaluahle asset to a tout. Also, it would have aided me in religious work. The great evangelist Dr. Orlando Edgar Miller, who took in more money at Carnegie Hall than Paderewc;ki used '--'